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9 years of Quodis

Today Quodis celebrates it’s 9th year of existence. For me personally that represents most of my recent life - from 17 to 26 years of age. Even though I only finished my studies two years ago, and arguably the first few years were only spent with a part-time commitment, looking back I know that every day had a role in shaping what Quodis is today.

I remember an infinity of episodes, good and bad decisions, successes and back-falls, and I know that I learned and evolved with each one of them. I guess that’s what they call “learn by doing”, which is the biggest gift of having your own company and having no one telling you what’s right or wrong.

Sometimes I wonder if I could have gone faster. I usually take quite some time before taking risky decisions - I still remember how daring it seemed when I first rented an office space and hired someone. It was a huge leap. But it just seemed right then - and not sooner nor later. I guess that’s what they call “right timing”, which is even more relevant when you take decisions by yourself - you learn that your gut is king.

I love sustainability - and I’m not talking about growing vegetables in my garden. I love not having to rely on external capital, borrow money or have to bet other people’s wealth on something I believe in. I know this makes me incompatible with and endless amount of business sectors and methods, but I wouldn’t be happy otherwise. Although we have some borrowed capital for cash-flow-survival-purposes (yes, we too have an average of over 60 days to get paid).

At Quodis we’ve been growing at steady and solid pace. We’re far from where we want to be in some years time, and that’s good: we have challenges ahead that keep us - or at least me - dreaming and moving forward and waiting for the right timing to take the next step, without having to sacrifice something I might regret in the future. I guess that’s what they call “keeping it real”, and I’m really glad we didn’t take the baits (and there are lots of them around) to make evil, short-sighted and money-oriented decisions.

And as we work to turn our next dream into reality, we’re having a hell of a good time celebrating another year of Quodis. Thank you to everyone who took a part in this enterprise. I could have done it without you, but it would have gone terribly terribly wrong.

Quodis - Est. 5 May 2001

Ramblings

In no particular order:

1. Ricardo Mestre has an excellent event once every month: Green Tone Bits, now on it’s 13th edition. It’s a DJ session promoting tons of absolutely free and gorgeous music, at Ogâmico bar in Lisbon, with free live stream on the Internet. And he keeps an archive online of all music he ever played, free for you to download (yes, free. Here’s why).
2. SHiFT 2010 happened despite volcanic activities. It’s a conference about lot’s of stuff, but mainly about inspiring you to do better. Although I didn’t stay long, from what I hear it went very well and put together a lot of people and ideas during two days at a challenging but inspiring setting at Teatro Aberto in Lisbon. Congratulations to the team, all my respect.
3. UX Lx (love the logo) is upcoming. Bruno Figueiredo is doing a hell of a job setting up a major professional conference about User Experience in Lisbon (at FIL) out of nothing, attracting professionals from all over the world - both to speak and to attend. Great sponsor lineup, including portuguese companies. Sadly I won’t be able to attend.
4. I hate these strikes we’re having in Portugal. Nothing against the right to strike, but everything against the abusive use of that right. The only positive effect? I loved the way traffic turned into chaos the day trains were on strike: an excellent proof of what the city would be like without everything that has been done to keep cars out of it (parking fees and fines, closed streets, more mass transport systems, buss lanes, etc etc).
5. Since I’m hating stuff: some weeks ago two days of semi-national-holidays were announced around the pope’s visit to Portugal. That already was bad enough (and I won’t even talk about the economic timing). Today the government announced all schools will be closed the day the pope is in Lisbon. I do not understand, really.
6. Back to the good stuff: betahaus, an awesome coworking space in Berlin I hope to visit soon, is going to promote a betalab in Lisbon during the month of May. Together with Cowork Lisboa these are all really great news for the freelance and micro-startup community in Lisbon. In the meanwhile all desks at Liberdade 229 are taken :)
7. I was checking some facts, and it turns out that the domain quodis.com was registered on May 5th 2001. That will be 9 years ago in some days. 9 years since I started this adventure. For the first time we’re going to celebrate this date (albeit in a small circle), and it feels good!

Do what you do best. Do it now.

Some months ago a good friend of mine convinced me to have a long Q&A session with a group of 30 students she’s teaching at a Design course.

In between the more practical and curious information exchanged with the bright students, at one point I think I gave them a really valuable advice, at least for those that consider themselves to be creative.

It’s nothing new, and tons of people said it before - but so many still seem to be miles away from it. If it would be an exercise, It would go something like this:

1. For a moment, ignore your context - academic, social, familiar, etc. It shouldn’t keep you from following your true passion.
2. Look at what you really love doing. Writing, painting, designing, programming, talking, collecting, travelling… what-ev-er, as long as it’s something that creates value.
3. Do it more often. Even more often. In your free time. With nobody paying for it. Just do it. Get better and better and do it even more. It shouldn’t bother you, because after all you love doing it!
4. Thanks to an ever more transparent and global society, somebody will find your work and love it because it’s more genuine and mature than most of your counterparts.
5. Voilá, you have the chance to get paid what you do best and love to do the most.

It’s only a hypothetical scenario, and the path is never this smooth, and it requires tons of trial and error. But be sure of this: if (for example) you’re a graphic designer, and write an application to a webdesign company saying

“I’m really eager to start doing webdesign, I love it, I’m ready to learn from you”,

what I read is

“I’m surely not in love with webdesign, because if I would be, I’d have tons of stuff done on my free time already, and wouldn’t be waiting for someone to pay me and teach me this, and this is NOT my future passion”.

Do, do, do what you love. If not at your dayjob, then on your freetime. You won’t get good at anything - much more at something you really love - unless you do it for yourself. Only then you might get a dayjob where you get paid to do what you do best and what you love doing the most.

Talks 2.0 - Lesson learned

Photo credit: Nelson Reis. That’s me on the right.

Yesterday I did a short 15-minute talk about the motivation of being an entrepreneur at the Talks 2.0 event in Porto, Portugal, for an audience of 350 students and young professionals.

In a line-up of 9 speakers I was second. And that made me nervous as hell: the audience was tough, clapping was strictly formal. The welcome notes were all cold, formal and some times even political - and almost all the speakers had either a suit or a blazer on.

I also quickly realized that almost all of the speakers were entrepreneurs with experience in raising capital - which is sort of a different league for me and my humble experience of growing slowly and in a financially sustainable way (or at lesat that’s what I try to do).

Here’s why I was nervous: I had prepared 15 minutes with an hippie, almost esoteric approach on the motivations, spreading of opportunities and transparency in the way I try to choose my paths. I had prepared a speech where I would make clear that

• I have no rules - everyone has it’s own reasons and motivations to be an entrepreneur and build something
• Lies attract liers, honesty attracts honest people
• We are free to build our own context, build our own luck
• We are like farmers, spreading opportunities like seeds
• You should be true to yourself, to who you are
• The motivation to build a company should be true to who you are
• The company should be true to itself and those who work there
• The more transparent your company is, the easier you’ll attract people and clients that like it for what it really is - and for what it does best
• And so on… (audio will - I hope - be available soon)

While the first speaker was up there and sharing his ideas about success and failure at his business, I kept thinking if I shouldn’t change what I had planned. Maybe I should be more practical. Talk about numbers, rules, business experience, how to treat your clients, etc. And be formal. Hell, if I could I’d geven run to the next store and get a blazer.

I took five minutes to get the answer to that: don’t change a thing. And suddenly it was as clear as water: just apply what your speech praises, be true to yourself and what you are. I gave the speech just as intended. And it went REALLY well - not just for me.

Never I had gotten so positive feedback (both through twitter and at the coffee break) from so many people. What really hit me was this one guy that came up to me and asked: “How did you do that - what is the trick to be so convincing and transparent, and transmit a message so well on the stage?”. You know the answer: be true to yourself and to what you are.

Sidenotes: Excellent organization. Both young and experienced, mostly inspiring speakers. Full house for a saturday afternoon. A shame I couldn’t make it to the networking dinner.

#cp #fail

Péssimo serviço da CP. Chego à campanhã, leio “Circulação suspensa IC e Alfas”. No horário de partida mantém-se tudo normal. Pergunto na bilheteira, dizem-me “pelas 20:30, mas já n vendemos bilhetes” (guess why). Na plataforma, cheia de gente, o plcar diz a hora original. Até chegar a hora. Aí atrasa dois minutos. E a cada 2 mins atrasa mais 2 mins - de maneira que parece ser sempre iminente.

Decido investigar. Volto à estação, vejo que há um IC por chegar de lx. Chegada prevista dali a 1 hora. Portanto já sabem que nunca vai ser antes.. vou outra vez à bilheteira. “Não sabemos de nada - isso gostava eu de saber”. Pergunto se é o mesmo comboio que está por chegar: “Sim é, e ainda tem que se fazer a limpeza”.

Reparo que nas chegadas a chegada desse comboio vai também sendo atrasada de depois em dois minutos. Finalmente a voz anuncia: “Por motivos de temporal, atraso imprevisto - assim que possível daremos mais informações”. That’s it. Vim para o café, encontrei uma tomada escondida no piso superior.

A aventura continua.

Há tantas, tantas maneiras de melhorar a experiência do cliente nesta situação que o que me pasma é como conseguiram não implementar nenhuma única delas.

UPDATE: O comboio vindo de Lisboa lá chegou duas horas depois, surgiram os primeiros sorrisos de esperança. Saíram os passageiros, e desapareceu na escuridão. Still no feedback, nenhum anúncio, nada. Pensei que tivessem dito “assim que possível daremos mais informações”. Guess not.

Meia hora depois chega o comboio, e acaba a aventura. Ninguém, em momento algum, pediu desculpas ou explicou o que se passou. Sei que São Pedro é o culpado pelo tempo. Mas pela (falta de) comunicação com os clientes não é de certeza.

Motivation for potential entrepreneurs

If you’d have to listen to me talking for 15 minutes you’d have enough of hearing me after 5 about the motivations to start your own business to an audience of students interested in the matters of entrepreneurship:

1. what would you like to hear?
2. what would you want to say?

Suggestions very welcome. My first ideas are:

• If you’re not already motivated, don’t force it - go do something else, there’s tons of other stuff you’ll be naturally motivated for
• Don’t imitate other life stories: every entrepreneur and every start up has it’s own DNA and reason to exist
• Set goals, ones that you are really very passionate and naturally motivated about. by default they will be hard to achieve
• You don’t have to explain yourself. Even with all the books and talks, you’re still one of a kind, and either you know it’s right or don’t
• I love bullet points
• More ideas?

The event is on the 27th at TALKS 2.0 in Porto, Portugal

How to be honest

Don’t lie

Hiring again

Just finished an afternoon with three interviews for someone special to join our Quodis team. So much I can tell: all of them are great people and together make the best set of talent I ever had to choose from.

All of them share a great passion to visit new places and learn new techniques (sort of the same thing, isn’t it?), and they are all extremely autodidact and multidisciplinary. Plus, they all share the same passion for music - not sure if that’s a coincidence. Seems like I hit the jackpot: from the over 40 applications I got, at least the three I chose for an interview are great matches.

Another big plus: two of them actually applied to Quodis (and exclusively to Quodis) because of our reputation as a place to get some great work done while maintaining a unique team with a super working and experimentation environment. That makes me extra happy and increases the challenge to keep it that way.

If I could, I’d probably hire at least two of them.

End of a chapter: The Star Tracker

I’ve received some questions about the recent announcement that The Star Tracker’s new IT platform will be developed by our friends over at log consulting, instead of my company Quodis that did the original development (in sweet old ASP 3.0).

We never knew TST would grow to have this kind of attention, and when it did, Quodis transfered its share of TST to the newly founded company Ixion, where I was a co-founder. As time went by and things at Quodis changed (focus on clients, SaaS, new partner, new mindset) it became clear that rewriting TST in a new language (be it RoR or PHP or or or) was a challenge that would completely take our time and focus in a direction we do not want our teams’ focus to be set.

In the meanwhile a new purpose and context for TST emerged in the hands of Tiago Forjaz: Fundação Talento, a project to promote portuguese talent around the world. At this point I decided to commit all my focus and resources to Quodis, donating my share of TST to Fundação Talento and leaving Ixion behind, and convincing everyone that we needed a new IT partner to keep developing TST.

I was closely involved in the process of choosing this new IT company, and still maintain an active role in IT advisory for TST. Quodis currently still does The Star Tracker’s hosting and maintenance, and we will work hard to help the guys at log prepare a smooth transition to the new platform. From there one, I will once and for all have no practical ties to TST, other than the obviously great memories and experience I gathered throughout these 2 years, together with a Mashable Open Web Award and 30.000 users from over 140 countries.